STMicroelectronics Leads the Way to the Ultimate Connected Home

STMicroelectronics (NYSE: STM), a global semiconductor leader serving customers across the spectrum of electronics applications and a leader in multimedia convergence technologies, is demonstrating a significant leap forward in home multimedia at IBC 2012. ST’s demonstration combines the power of the Company’s STiH416 (“Orly”) connected-home System-on-Chip (SoC) device with Twonky Server software from PacketVideo, the software pioneer powering the world’s leading multimedia services on millions of home and mobile devices, to enable the ultimate connected-home experience. The solution delivers state-of-the-art home multimedia capability, where content from many different sources can be streamed to many different devices in the home, regardless of the original content format or the screen resolution of the display device.

The diversity of technologies currently used throughout the multimedia world presents many challenges to achieving the vision of sharing content from any source on any other consumer application. For example, today most mobile devices are still unable to play TV content and most TVs cannot play videos taken from mobile devices.

The STMicroelectronics solution to this challenge requires two technology advances. The first is a hardware solution that provides multi-format transcoding with the ability to bridge the many different multimedia scenarios, each of which has their own standards and resolutions. The second advance is a smart media server that complies with the universally accepted DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance)/UPNP (Universal Plug and Play) standards that can discover and communicate with any devices in the home.

ST’s Orly is the most powerful connected-home SoC available today, providing the extreme performance needed for a truly amazing home-entertainment experience. Combining advanced broadband and broadcast capabilities with intensive on-chip computing, the device gives consumers easy access to advanced digital entertainment experiences such as integrated broadcast and Over-The-Top (OTT) Internet content, 3D gaming and TV, social videoconferencing, and home automation by communicating with other home devices and sensors. The device supports true multi-screen experiences, with real-time transcoding capability for seamless streaming to multiple smart consumer products ranging from smartphones and tablets to large-screen televisions. It also integrates the advanced security framework for which ST is well recognized, alongside high image quality delivered to end users.

“The goal of delivering ‘any content on any device’ has been an industry vision for many years and we are now showing a major step towards this vision of the ultimate connected home,” said Laurent Remont, Group Vice President and General Manager of ST’s Unified Platform Division “The addition of PacketVideo’s Twonky technology on top of a powerful device such as Orly extends the end user’s entertainment experience to any device. Any multimedia content, and live television in particular, can therefore be streamed with the best-in-class user experience.”

“Our collaboration with ST has demonstrated that the two key building blocks of the connected home – a high performance home gateway chip with built-in transcoding and a robust, versatile and standards-compliant media server technology – are not only available now but work perfectly together,” said Frank LaBarbera, Vice President Market Development, PacketVideo.

Please stop by the STMicroelectronics booth at IBC 2012 (Amsterdam, September 7-11), Hall 1/F40 to see the demonstration of sharing broadcast TV content on mobile devices or any DLNA client, including set-top boxes and Smart TVs.

About STMicroelectronics ST is a global leader in the semiconductor market serving customers across the spectrum of sense and power technologies and multimedia convergence applications. From energy management and savings to trust and data security, from healthcare and wellness to smart consumer devices, in the home, car and office, at work and at play, ST is found everywhere microelectronics make a positive and innovative contribution to people's life. By getting more from technology to get more from life, ST stands for life.augmented.

In 2011, the Company’s net revenues were $9.73 billion. Further information on ST can be found at www.st.com.